Has the digital revolution lowered the standards of good quality photos? With the enormous amount of pictures being taken daily since the proliferation of digital cameras, there are many lower quality photos floating around everywhere. Things ranging from minor issues like slightly off-balance colour, to blurry, dark out of focus images are becoming more common. So are people becoming desensitized to lower quality pictures?

Depends. I see them on myspace and facebok as user pictures, and things...but to be honest...nobody is framing or "showing off" crappy pictures from what I see...either that or they just don't know the difference.

the number of rubbish images has sort of exploded in recent years ... and acceptable or even good photography has not risen in numbers proportionally.

At least this is true when it comes to what is unleashed unto the world ... maybe just as much rubbish was produced a decade ago, just people did not post it all over the world using the internet

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Good call.

Yesteryear it was not as easy to upload 200068848 digi-pics to photobucket or whatever...

My 12 year old sister could probably do it...

Now it's just as soon as you bring your camera near your computer somehow it gets on the web instantly and all that nice jazz.

People also don't care if they waste film anymore. They don't have to pay for film. It's all digital. usually they're like "I can just delete it later"...but they never end up deleting it and it ends up somewhere online.

The number of amature happysnappers has increased which can point to the increase in poor quality pictures. As for their acceptance that really depends. I do get the feeling that modern trends tend towards cheap disposable everything as opposed to paying for high quality. There is no clearer indication than the current generation of mobile phones. My Nokia 5110 still works. It looks and feels like a brick, but I have been through 3 phones since then. Yet the old goat powers on.

Well, after there's been a family reunion last weekend on which all three of us "children" (neither of us are children any more, but you know ... my sister, my brother and myself) took photos of the event, I was asked to edit them and arrange them for a photo book. So I was given the out-of-camera photos that my siblings took - and I am quite taken aback by what my sister is offering me.

She, who has been my big mentor for years and years. She, who praised herself on her eye and skill to take tack-sharp photos (back in the film days), on her feel for candid shots and getting them taken in just THE right moment.

She's turned digital, too, and is now happy with photos of a quality that makes me CRINGE.

I don't GET it!

So that very close-to-home and latest "analysis" of (other people's) use of digital photography (I am still in the process of editing their pics) is sort of underlining what the OP suggests is happening to the world of photography these days. Sadly so. But yes...

She, who has been my big mentor for years and years. She, who praised herself on her eye and skill to take tack-sharp photos (back in the film days), on her feel for candid shots and getting them taken in just THE right moment.

She's turned digital, too, and is now happy with photos of a quality that makes me CRINGE.

I don't GET it!

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Now, this is interesting ....so you are saying the people who used to be good at film photography lower their own standards?

What I have seen often, is that people switched from film to digital, and the quality went down since they could not afford a camera body which comes close im technical image quality to film. But these people realised and are unhappy since!

But that would be a totally different story then and sounds sad indeed!

But, just to comfort you .. I know what it is like to edit other people's images (familiy, ...) .. once they found out that you can "improve" image quality, they enjoy giving you images for postprocessing. So I know all too well what horrible photography is out there

Other than the fact that the technology is more accessible to more people, I don't think that people EXPECT lower quality. Who doesn't have a couple of shoeboxes full of crappy photos? People who couldn't afford to get into photography due to buying film and developing pictures (like me!) can explore the world of photography where they couldn't before. It just seems that now everyone's showing off their crappy images (I'm sure I'm guilty of this).

Ultimately, though, when it matters, people are still going to recognize quality photography for what it is.

the number of rubbish images has sort of exploded in recent years ... and acceptable or even good photography has not risen in numbers proportionally.

At least this is true when it comes to what is unleashed unto the world ... maybe just as much rubbish was produced a decade ago, just people did not post it all over the world using the internet

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Great point, Alex_B! I hadn't even really considered this factor. I imagine there were a lot of bad pictures taken in the past, it just wasn't so easy to bombard the masses with them. I have no doubt this plays a big role in the appearance that people's standards have lowered.

However... I still think there may be a trend towards more people just accepting these lower quality pictures as good.

Mike_E said:

You have all heard of the theory of acclimatization?

In short, you can get used to anything after a while.

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This is exactly what I was referring to in my OP. I find people are becoming desentized to them (just never heard it called the theory of acclimatization). I really believe it's true that we can get used to anything with constant bombardment.

Now, I'm not saying either that people "expect" lower quality... just that they may becoming more used to seeing lower quality, therefore are more tolerant of it.